


Through the Keyhole

by hexlibris



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Finger Sucking, Friends to Lovers, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Internalized Homophobia, Light Angst, M/M, Period Typical Attitudes, Pining, Prompt Fill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-30
Updated: 2019-09-30
Packaged: 2020-11-08 14:23:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20836952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hexlibris/pseuds/hexlibris
Summary: Five times Billy watched Steve (his moles, his eyes, hismouth) and the one time Steve did something about it.





	Through the Keyhole

**Author's Note:**

> This is a prompt fill for #29 from the list of [50 Kissing Prompts](https://kashimalin-fanfiction.tumblr.com/post/178524845380/50-types-of-kisses-writing-prompts), requested by Anonymous: _staring at each other’s lips for a moment before moving closer, as if drawn together by some unseen force._
> 
> I have taken liberties with both the canon timeline as well as the prompt itself. You can find the other prompt fills on [my tumblr](https://hexlikesramennoodles.tumblr.com/tagged/writing-prompts), if that interests you.

**i.**

“Jesus, that’s disgusting,” Tommy said. “Do they really have to go at it in public like that?”

Carol blew a giant pink bubble, then inhaled it back into her mouth. She leaned into Tommy’s ear, presenting him with the wad of gum stuck between her teeth. He gave her a wet peck on the lips, sucking the gum off her tongue with a loud smacking noise. “Fucking exhibitionists,” she agreed. “I bet the princess gets off on it. Leading him around like a prize show dog.”

Billy glanced at them with unsubtle distaste. He resented having to sully himself with the likes of Tommy H. and Carol, but he was still fresh meat at Hawkins High, the New Kid. What little clout he had was fragile, up in the air. He would cling to whatever rung of the ladder he could get a hold of.

“Ever since Harrington started givin’ Wheeler the moon eyes, he’s been comin' to our table less and less,” Tommy explained.

“Probably thinks he’s too good for us,” said Carol snidely. She took a swig from her Coke, burped proudly, then tittered. Tommy matched her, titter for titter. Even their laughter was a cliché, grossly cartoony: _hyuck-hyuck-hyuck_. Billy rolled his eyes.

Steve Harrington _was_ too good for them, but Billy wasn’t about to say it to their faces. Tommy had a mean, thuggish look about him, even when he was laughing and sharing his girlfriend’s gum. Billy never shied away from a fight, but he also knew his father would be watching him, waiting for him to slip up. Neil rarely needed an excuse, and Billy couldn’t give him the satisfaction of having one. Easier to bide his time, do some watching of his own. Tommy and Carol were small fry, although they didn’t know it; Billy was more interested in the big fish.

He watched Harrington from across the cafeteria, his forgotten macaroni and cheese congealing on his tray in a puddle of piss yellow ooze.

Nancy Wheeler was sitting next to him, nuzzling at the crook of Harrington’s neck like a lost kitten. She was pretty, Billy supposed. If you were into that sort of thing: bland and flat-chested, easy on the eye in a wan, anorexic way. Billy’s assessment of her was nothing more than detached, scientific curiosity; he already knew he was the better-looking one out of the two of them.

He only had eyes for Steve.

_Old money_, Tommy had muttered in Billy’s ear on his first day at Hawkins High. Harrington came from old money, which was why he used to be the king of the hill before Wheeler entered the picture; his father owned one of the largest insurance companies in the United States. They supposedly had a family coat of arms and a personal caterer, but watching from across the cafeteria, Billy almost wouldn’t have been able to tell. Steve’s face was a curious study in geometric angles and paradoxes. He had a straight, pointed nose, a square jaw, and eyes that seemed overly large for their sockets, like he was always on the verge of surprise. His hair was thick and begging to be pulled, but his lips intrigued Billy the most. They were full and bow-shaped, naturally pouty.

Billy had been looking for too long. Steve turned around, catching his eye through the sea of heads. He held Billy’s gaze for half a second, politely puzzled. Trying to place Billy’s face with a name. Then he grinned, tipping Billy the biggest, most ironic wink he’d ever seen.

_You’re gay._

A flight of shocked laughter burst from Billy’s lips. Both Tommy and Carol stared.

“Something funny, Hargrove?” Tommy demanded.

“Just a thought I had,” Billy said calmly. _Steve Harrington’s fucking gay, and you’re both idiots._

**ii.**

“You cock_sucker_!”

Pain radiated through Billy’s side. He arched onto his tiptoes, grunting, all the weight of _National Geographic: Atlas of the World _balanced on his fingertips. It belonged on the top shelf, right between the _National Geographic _magazines and the _National Geographic _travel guides, but Billy was a head too short to reach. It didn’t help that his ribs were badly bruised, his kidneys throbbing from coming into contact with the toe of Neil’s boot—his father’s favorite way of greeting Billy whenever he’d finished a double shift at the slaughterhouse and arrived home stinking of burnt sow’s hair and butchery. One day Billy would repay Neil that debt in full, but for now all he could do was bite into his bicep to staunch the tears that threatened to flow freely from his eyes.

“Cocksucker,” he said weakly. “Cocksucker, cocksucker, cocksucker—”

“Need some help?”

_Atlas of the World_ slipped through his fingers. Billy had to grab hold of the shelf with his other hand to steady himself, wincing as the pain in his side flared, loud and bright. Through heavy, slitted eyes, he could just make out someone standing at the other end of the aisle. Harrington.

“Let me,” he offered.

He moved quietly, on lighter feet than Billy had expected. Skirting around the returns cart, relieving him of _Atlas _and sliding it onto the top shelf. His shirt lifted from his belt, revealing a stomach spotted like an egg with moles.

“Thanks,” Billy said, albeit grudgingly.

Harrington grinned at him with easy charm. “You’re the new kid, right? From California?”

He said the word using the same tone someone might use when saying the word _Narnia_—as if home was somewhere mythical and faraway, made up. Billy held his tongue, thinking that if you’d lived in the Midwest your whole life, then crossing state lines was probably akin to dropping off the end of the fucking world.

“San Diego,” he said. “You’re Harrington, right?”

Steve’s grin widened. Billy could see some of Tommy’s _old money _in him now—it manifested in the hand Steve pushed through his hair, the way he shifted all his weight onto one hip as he folded his arms. A rich kid’s smug self-assurance. “Tommy’s already been talkin’ shit about me, huh? How long have you been in Hawkins for, new kid from San Diego, California?”

“Two weeks.” Billy leaned in, not even bothering to lower his voice as he vented his displeasure: “Full offence, but this place is a shithole.”

Steve laughed. That was unexpected, too. A pit opened in Billy’s stomach, but it had nothing to do with the pain in his ribs, and everything to do with the way Steve’s mouth looked when he laughed; the way it looked all the time. Since the incident in the cafeteria, Billy had resolved to be more discreet—a quick sideways glance here, another through his eyelashes there, never lasting longer than a second. He’d even considered kicking Harrington’s ass, if only to level the playing field a little. Harrington wouldn’t be able to laugh with a mouthful of broken splinters replacing his teeth. He wouldn’t even be able to smile.

“Is that why you’re in here on your lunchbreak?” said Steve. He was leaning in as well, his hand coming down to rest on the side of the returns cart. “The real world’s that fuckin’ awful?”

“I like libraries.” Billy gave a half-hearted shrug. “I like books.”

It was both a lie and the truth. Billy hadn’t read in a book in years, save for the ones he was required to read for school; he’d made himself familiar with libraries purely out of necessity. Every once in a while, Neil became angry enough to lock Billy out of the house, leaving him to roam the streets. Fast food restaurants were open twenty-four hours, but they were also busier and more dangerous—there were always too many drunks thinking they were the next John Wayne, too many fucking _cops. _The library at Hawkins High closed at six o’clock on weeknights, but it was safe haven on days like this one, when Billy didn’t dare show his face in the cafeteria, not where people would see the way he was walking, the way he was holding himself. Ms. Carmody, the snaggle-toothed, date-chewing overseer of the school’s book-borrowing population, didn’t give a damn if Billy was here nearly every other day, as long as he made himself useful. And he did.

He made sure of that.

“Full offence,” Steve said, “but you don’t look like much of a reader.”

“Yeah?” Billy pulled on the handle of the cart, biting his lip as the wheels caught on the carpet and his entire torso screamed in sore protest. “Could say the same of you.”

“Hey, I resent that! I actually _love _to read, you know, because—because my dad loves to read, too.” Airily Steve started to count down on his fingers: “We read _Business Insider_, _Entrepreneur_, _Harvard Business Review_, _Indiana Business Today_ … all the classics. What about you?”

For some reason, the question caught Billy off guard. He studied Harrington’s face, retracing the moles stamped across his cheek (two in a row, each perfect mimicries of the other), the bangs that seemed to nod along in earnest agreement whenever he spoke. He studied Harrington’s soft eyes, and his mouth that was pink and slightly moist; kind of lewd. The mouth that Billy sometimes wanted to hate, on account of his father’s voice. Other times …

“My mom used to read me this one book when I was little,” he began slowly, with little awareness of what he was saying. “Called _Peter and Wendy. _It’s about a boy who wouldn’t grow up.”

(_The bitch-whore-cunt would read it to you every night_. His father’s voice, spinning its evening gospel of deceit and heartbreak. Absent mother, single father, unwanted son; this was the web Neil had spun for him, again and again, until it was all Billy dreamed and breathed and believed. _And then she ran off, like the bitch-whore-cunt that she was, leaving us _both _behind. That’s the way it’s always gonna be, Billy-boy. It’s always gonna be you and me._)

Steve’s mouth was doing it _again. _Hanging half open, as if he were trying to catch flies. He didn’t seem to be able to close it; his mouth was always open, day-dreamy.

“What?” Billy demanded. Too sharply: Steve flinched.

“It’s kind of hard to imagine you, uh, _little_. Like, as a kid. Seriously, though—” Steve cleared his throat, turning abruptly business-like, “Tommy and Carol are guppies. Bottom feeders. You can do better than that.”

Billy felt his lip curl. “I’m not gonna play second fiddle to you and your girlfriend, Harrington. If that’s what you’re asking.”

“It’s not, actually,” Steve countered, but his defensiveness gave him away. “Well, not really—Nance runs a study group on Wednesdays and Thursday afternoons. I’m just sayin’ … if you’re already at the library _anyway_ …”

“Not this Thursday,” Billy said, with some reluctance. “Coach is hosting basketball tryouts.”

Steve’s face brightened. “Oh, you play basketball? Hey, I’m on the school team already. Did you say you were coming to tryouts this Thursday? If that’s the case—”

“Jesus, you don’t give up, do you? You’re like a fucking overexcited puppy.”

Steve laughed again. “I dunno, man. It’s not every day that we get a new kid from out west. I’m just trying to figure you out, I guess.”

“_Figure me out_? What—”

“I dunno,” Steve repeated, still laughing, his bangs nodding like the necks of daisies. It was a moment of crushing, breathless panic; Billy thought Harrington was going to touch him. He didn’t think he would be able to swallow down the pain, or the truth of where it came from, if he did. Luckily, Steve only let go of the cart, dropping his hands to his jean pockets. “See you on Thursday.”

**iii.**

Thursday arrived. Billy won.

He sent Tommy H. limping off to the school nurse with a sprained ankle and his tail tucked soundly between his legs. He gave Owen Piercer, a hulking lug of a sophomore, an elbow to the face and a bloody nose for having the audacity to try. He bullied Harrington across the court, pinching at the vulnerable flesh of his hips and holding him by the shirt every time Steve tried to get away from him. When Steve started to mouth off, Billy knocked him on his ass. He watched the light go out of Steve’s eyes, listened to the comical _woo! _of his wounded breath as it was heaved out of his diaphragm. His mouth had dropped open in a perfect perplexed circle, like, _oh. That’s not supposed to happen._

Coach offered Billy a place on the team on the spot. Truth be told, he hardly cared.

He was the biggest and the strongest, and he always won.

“You cheated,” Steve would tell him later. “Pinching and holding the man, that’s fucking cheating.”

Billy could’ve laughed in his face. All was fair in love and war, which is to say, _nothing _was fair. A simple fact of life that Steve, with his easy smiles and his blithe privilege, apparently had yet to learn. The other boys learned fast enough—Owen and Tommy and the rest of them. Their eyes followed Billy through the locker rooms, porcine and resentful. They feared him, they hated him, they would never touch him again.

Steve stood too close to him under the shower spray, soaping his cock. His mouth was open, the muscles in his arms flexing. He gargled, then spat. Water flooded the plughole in a dully roaring river. When Steve reached for his shampoo bottle, Billy’s eyes trailed over his chest hair, a lush carpet that was even darker than the hair on his head.

“I’m telling you, it’s cheating,” Steve said stubbornly.

“You’re too precious, Harrington,” Billy replied. He stepped under the water, watching Steve’s body dissolve into a swirling waft of steam and sound.

There was a time when he would’ve purposefully kept a low profile in the men’s locker room—scrubbing himself until his skin was pink and raw-feeling, as if doing so would molt the sin from his bones like coils of dead cells, not wanting to look at the bodies around him yet being unable to stop, painfully conscious of his father’s specter watching him, his father’s hand with its hairy knuckles that liked to pull and slap and shake if he dared look for too long, shake him like a dog with a rat between its teeth, _I didn’t raise my son to be some kind of—_but his father wasn’t here. Billy had won. He was no longer the new kid; he was _Billy Hargrove_, king of the anthill. He could do what he liked.

Within a narrow boundary.

“It’s not—it’s not _sportsmanlike_,” Steve complained, shaking out his hair. Clearly, he’d envisioned basketball tryouts ending differently. His eyes also watched Billy through the steam, but there was no hatred there. Only confused betrayal. Maybe Steve had thought Billy was his friend.

“I’m not here for sportsmanship, pretty boy,” Billy said. “I’m not here for you, either. You need to get that out of your fucking head.”

He scrubbed himself at a punishing pace. His thoughts were stuck, replaying scenes from the basketball court in lurid, voyeuristic detail: how red and blotchy Steve’s face had become, the longer he played, the longer Billy tormented him; how Billy’s bare chest had been glued to the back of Steve’s shirt with sweat before Coach ordered them apart. He wondered if Coach had noticed that Steve’s mouth was open all the time. Or that he stood way too close to people—to boys—when he talked. Billy wondered if anyone thought about that as much as he did—if that was what Steve looked like when he came inside Wheeler. Mouth partially open, eyes squeezed shut, his cheeks rosy, moist apples. It was almost enough to make Billy hard. He was _already _hard. _Cocksucker. _He was so hard he was dripping.

“You think I’m pretty?”

Steve’s voice spoke right next to his ear. He sounded fucking delighted.

Billy planted both hands on Steve’s chest and shoved. The shampoo bottle fell, the sound of it crashing onto the tile reverberating throughout the locker room. Everyone was looking at him—looking at his bruises. Once purple, only just starting to yellow. It didn’t matter, Billy thought. The locker room was the only place where unexplained bruises made sense. It was just boys being boys.

He walked away.

**iv.**

Billy was drunk.

It was Halloween. Someone had thrown a roll of toilet paper over Tina’s chandelier in celebration. Billy tore one corner off and used it to wipe the beer from his mouth. Tommy hailed him from the kitchen, dressed as the Karate Kid. He was all smiles now, all chummy claps on the back; desperate for Billy’s approval. If Billy asked, Tommy would probably suck his dick tonight, just to show him how well behaved he was.

It had been a while since Billy had had his dick sucked. He was drunk enough to consider the idea somewhat amusing: Tommy’s mouth, wrapped around his cock. The pornographic imprint Billy’s girth would make against his cheek. Tommy’s lips were even fuller than Steve’s; too full. Personally, it was a turn-off. Billy wasn’t _that _fucking drunk. He still had standards.

Speaking of Harrington—Billy was almost sure he’d been locked in Tina’s downstairs bathroom with Wheeler for the last forty-five minutes. Were they arguing, or fucking? Tommy had wanted to place bets on the former, on Wheeler’s wandering eye. Billy hated her for that—not for screwing Steve, but for throwing what she had with him _away. _He gorged himself on beer and cigarettes while he waited for Steve to open Tina’s bathroom door; greedy, he gorged himself on his hatred for Nancy Wheeler. The ruin she’d made.

Finally, just after midnight, the door to the bathroom opened. Steve staggered out, squinting in the light like some creature of the underground. His eyes were red and shiny.

He moved through the crowd so quickly that Billy almost missed him.

“Hey, Harrington—hey, hey, _hey_.”

“Oh,” Steve said, slowing a little. “It’s you.”

Billy held up a flask of something he could no longer taste. “Come drink with me.”

“I don’t think I should—”

“Don’t be such a fucking pussy. It’s Halloween, dipshit. None of these weak fucks can keep up with me, except for you.”

“Alright, alright, _dipshit_. Jesus,” Steve took a dainty sip from the flask and made a face, “did you put any mixer in this?”

“No. What, you want some? Here.” Billy showed him his middle finger.

“My God, you’re a colossal asshole.” Steve took a longer gulp from the flask, shuddered, then put his mouth to Billy’s ear and said, “Let’s go outside. It’s too fucking hot in here.”

He was slurring by the time he collapsed onto Tina’s back step, Billy’s flask attached to his mouth like a baby’s bottle. Maybe it was finally catching up with him, the enormity of what Wheeler had done. He clung to Billy’s arm, buried his face in Billy’s shoulder, took the cigarette Billy offered him with an outstretching of fingers that lingered, brushing his knuckles and reminding Billy of how little trust he had in himself (he thought: _how does no one else see him? How do you not see_ yourself_, Harrington?_). Then Steve started crying.

“She was meant to be the _one_ … the whole package. Marriage … kids … a little house on Loch Nora with a dog … it was meant to be _perfect_ …”

“Who told you that?”

Tears glistened on Steve’s eyelashes like freshwater pearls; he was struggling to keep Billy in focus. “My dad,” he said numbly. “My dad, he … wanted me to … Nancy was from a good family … stable … my dad wanted me to provide but she—_she_ wanted me to stand up to him. That’s what she was always telling me. That I didn’t have to do what dad told me to—”

“All this talk about what other people want, Harrington,” interrupted Billy. “You ever thought about what _you _want?”

Steve looked like he was in physical pain. This wasn’t supposed to happen, either. Billy should be comforting him. He was supposed to be his friend, but Billy could never be Harrington’s friend. “I’m not drunk enough for that.”

_I think you are_, Billy almost said. He lowered himself onto the back step, feeling in his jacket pocket for the Marlboro carton—before realizing he’d given Steve the last one. He looked up to find Steve hunched over his kneecaps, gargoyle-like, his bangs flopping into his bleary, tear-rimmed eyes. Watching Billy watch him.

“What are you dressed as?” he asked suddenly. “Maverick?”

“Huh?” Billy glanced down. Oh. The leather jacket. _Top Gun. _Billy was careful to stow that nugget of information away for later: Steve hadn’t seen _Terminator. _He would keep it for himself, this part of Steve, polish it the same way he polished thoughts of Steve’s mouth and his dopily nodding bangs. Make them shine as brightly as his newfound hatred for Nancy Wheeler.

Steve smiled at him with uncertain warmth. “Shit, man. Maybe I’m drunk enough for Tom Cruise.” He burst into garbled song: “_Just take those records off the self! I’ll sit and listen to ‘em by myself …”_

Billy stood up. “I’ll drive you home.”

It was like trying to get a hold of individual strands of wet spaghetti; Steve’s limbs were everywhere. “I’m fine, I’m _fine_, really, thanks, man,” he said, elbowing Billy in the ribs, stumbling down Tina’s driveway with as much grace as a foal walking on ice. Billy had to hoist his arm around his neck to get him to walk in a straight line.

Loch Nora was a comfortable suburban nook, as far from anything that Billy was used to. He let the car idle in the middle of the road, watching Steve in his periphery. He was out cold in the passenger seat, his chin hanging at a crooked angle.

“Harrington, come on. Get out of my car.”

He reached across and gave Steve’s shoulder a testing nudge, his gaze restless and his mouth dry. He’d be fine in the morning, Billy told himself. He’d sleep for twelve hours, and wake up with no memory of the night before. Billy didn’t have that luxury. He was restless, always restless. Sleep never came easy while he was sober.

“Sorry I cheated,” he said.

He killed the engine, waiting until the headlights blinked out before readjusting the rearview mirror. Billy winked at his reflection, overt and obscene. Pushed both thumbs past his lips and stretched his mouth into a wide, white grin.

He couldn’t tell if he was telling the truth or not.

But he was sorry. He really was.

“You cocksucker,” Billy told his mirror self, solemnly. Then he began to shiver. He thought of his father, the warm copper smell of his uniform, the blood smell of the killing chute. Susan washed Neil’s clothes every night, but they still fucking reeked. _Run, little piggy._

He thought about slamming his forehead into the steering wheel, giving himself a black eye for when he returned home. Sometimes Neil seemed to like Billy better when he was a little roughed up; other times, he used it as an excuse. _What did I tell you about losing your temper, Billy? You know it doesn’t set a good example for your sister. _

In the end, Billy didn’t bash his brains out on the steering wheel. He leaned over, searching the inside of Steve’s suit jacket until he found what he was looking for: the keys to the BMW. Billy pocketed them, then paused. The night was cool and quiet; the moonlight blanketed the houses, lending them an eerie, preserved stillness, like the inside of a movie set. Somewhere in the gutter, a cat in heat began to yowl.

Steve’s throat rose smooth and bare from his collar. Billy watched him. He was so close he could see the erratic flutter of Steve’s pulse, count his eyelashes. The compulsion seized him with brute power, wringing him through like a hand with a piece of wet linen—Billy pressed his nose to the crown of Steve’s hair, breathing deep. Hunting for that hot blood and animal hair smell.

He didn’t find it. Instead, Steve was cologne and fabric softener, shampoo and hairspray, warm and comforting. He knew how to take care of himself. Wheeler would’ve liked that, Billy thought; she would’ve borrowed Steve’s shirts and sweaters every time she saw him, just so she could take the smell of him home with her.

He left Steve sprawled on the manicured sidewalk, then returned to Tina’s for more beer. Driving with one hand on the steering wheel and the other in his pocket, closed around Steve’s car keys. A dozy sense of unreality followed him—time being no longer linear but circular, repetitive, the way it was in dreams—when he arrived back at the party, Tommy hailed him from the kitchen, clapped him on the shoulder. He was handed a red cup to urgings of _kingkingking_; never one to disappoint the masses, Billy drank it all in one go. Then he drank another, crushing the can against his forehead to a chorus of whoops and howling applause. And another: Billy was a chameleon, changing colors at will, playing the game of faces. Nobody would be able to tell the difference.

He obliterated his senses. Drinking until he no longer had eyes to see with, no eyes on which the afterimages of Steve’s moles had been burned, no burden of memory. He was nothing and no one, steadily going from solid to liquid to gas. Drink after drink. Dispersing into the atmosphere, into unconsciousness.

**v.**

The Harringtons didn’t have a coat of arms overlooking their front gate, but they did have a doorknocker. The weight of it was heavy and unwieldy in Billy’s hand, wrought from solid iron. It made him feel small and a bit stupid, standing on Steve’s front step like some anxious Girl Scout, waiting to be let in. When he let the doorknocker fall, the sound it made against the wood was like muffled thunder.

He fidgeted while he watched the shadows grow longer and longer in the painted glass. His hand was clenched in his pocket, sweating around Steve’s car keys; he badly needed a cigarette. Something in his mouth to stop him from licking his lips, or chewing at his nails until the beds were bloody and raw.

There was a pause when Steve opened the door, a holding of breath that stretched on for a little too long. Steve stared at him, his mouth cinched into a tight frown. He looked as tired as Billy felt; his skin hung in baggy crescents under his eyes, and his hair was limp, noticeably without its usual pomp and bluster.

Finally, Billy supplied, “You look like shit.”

The corners of Steve’s frown twitched. He opened the door wider, leaving it ajar behind him. “What are you doing here?”

“Your car,” Billy said. “You, uh, you left your car at Tina’s.”

He withdrew his hand from his pocket, dangling Steve’s car keys from the end of one finger. Steve caught them on reflex; his expression was pained again, like he was internally measuring two opposing sides. Then he said, “You drove my car here?”

“Uh, yeah.”

Steve’s tongue poked absently at the corner of his mouth, a fleeting pink blur; Billy was starting to think he wasn’t even aware he was doing it. He couldn’t be. “Where’s _your _car?”

“Still at Tina’s.” Billy put a hand on the doorframe, closing the distance between them both, but only just. “Don’t you remember how you got home last night?”

“Sort of.” Steve gave him another measured look, frowning, his eyes round as dimes. Then they turned sly. “Did you take my keys just so you’d have an excuse to see me?”

“_Lemondrop_?”

A woman came gliding out of the depths of the house, dressed in a satin nightgown. She was pale and thin, with a long sheaf of wavy hair that fell over one shoulder. The resemblance to Nancy Wheeler was striking. “Lemondrop,” she said, “don’t leave the door open, there’s a breeze—”

It was impossible to miss the way Steve’s posture changed, in the blink of an eye: becoming stiff and inward, like he was preparing himself for a fight, or flight. “Mom, I’m kind of busy here.”

The pale woman faltered. Her eyes slid from Billy’s earring and down to the scuffed toes of his Dr. Martens, curious and contemptuous. They interrogated Billy coldly: _who are you and what do you want with my baby? _“I’m sorry, I don’t believe we’ve met.”

“I’m Billy, ma’am,” he said, with a sure, pearly smile. He held her gaze as he folded her hand delicately between both palms; the oldest trick in the book. “Billy Hargrove.”

“Billy. How … wonderful,” she said, in a tone that suggested the exact opposite. Unsmiling, she extricated her hand from his grasp, shaking him loose as if he were a millipede that had gotten snagged on her sleeve. “Lemondrop, I wish you’d informed me that we were having guests today—”

(_You bitch_, Billy thought suddenly, cheerfully.)

“—I suppose you’re staying for breakfast, Billy?”

“Actually,” Steve said loudly, “he was just leaving.”

“I was simply asking him a question, there’s no need to snap,” Mrs. Harrington said, with sweet, dripping condescension. She thinned her lips, then added, “I received a phone call from Karen Wheeler this morning. She told me you never dropped her daughter home after the party.”

(_you fucking bitch_)

“No. She—” Steve caught Billy’s eye and flushed angrily, “Nance went home with Jonathan last night. Are you done?”

She sucked in a noisy breath; her eyebrows rose in a gleeful parody of hurt. “Lemondrop, I didn’t mean—”

“Yes, you did.” Steve stepped off the porch, taking Billy roughly by the arm. “We’re going now,” he called over his shoulder, without waiting for her to reply. “Don’t you dare,” he hissed, when he saw the look on Billy’s face. “Don’t you say a fucking word.”

“I wasn’t gonna say anything, _lemondrop_.”

He ducked his head, grinning as Steve took aim at his shoulder with his fist. Their shoes crunched on gravel, then fallen leaves. Steve was leading him away from the house, past the covered pool, all the way across the lawn to where the trees thickened, and the ground became uneven with roots. Far above their heads, the trees sawed into the sky, their branches fanged and savage. Billy could hear running water somewhere, but its location was difficult to place; the sound was compounded by the closeness of the trees, distorted and rendered flat.

“Is she still lookin’ at us?” Steve said in his ear. His hand was biting into Billy’s arm, steering him along the path. “Shit, no, don’t turn around—just keep walking.”

“You good, Harrington?”

Steve laughed out loud. “No,” he said. “No, I’m really not good. She’s gonna give me hell for this later_._”

“She—?”

“My fuckin’ mom, man. She’s not this bad, usually. _Usually._” Steve slowed his pace, releasing Billy’s arm as they edged around the treeline. It was here that Steve stooped into a hovering half-crouch, rolling a cigarette from a baggie of tobacco hidden in his pocket. “This whole thing with my dad,” Steve said. He held the rolled cigarette out for Billy to take, his eyes strangely luminous in the leafy gloom. They watched Billy as he stuck the cigarette into his mouth, but Billy pretended not to notice. “He’s been cheating on her with one of his secretaries. That’s why he’s never here. He tells her he’s going on work trips, but then he doesn’t come back for days, weeks. It’s like she thinks _I’m _gonna leave her, next. Like I _could_—” When Billy looked up, Steve had already averted his gaze, his hands shaking as they upended more tobacco into his lap, “—I’m gonna fuckin’ die in this town, man. I mean it. I’m never gonna leave. Some people, they’re born here, and they die in the same place without ever having seen what it’s like, you know, on the _outside. _My passport expires next year. I don’t know if I’m gonna get another one. I used to go overseas, but that was with my parents. What am I supposed to do, go with my dad and his new girlfriend to the fuckin’ Greek islands? She’s, like. _Eighteen_. My age. ‘Don’t worry about it,’ he tells me. ‘I’ll get you a job after graduation.’ What job? Slinging ice cream to the same bunch of assholes I went to high school with? Fuck that. I’d rather live off of food stamps. You heard what Nancy did?”

“No,” Billy lied. Steve glared at him, his palms smudged with tobacco flakes.

“I’m not fuckin’ stupid,” he said. “I know Carol told you. By tomorrow, it’s gonna be all over town. Well, you heard it here first, alright? I’m a cuckold. To fucking _Jonathan Byers._”

Billy propped open his lighter and watched the flame grow weak. _Bitch_, he thought, flipping the lighter closed. Steve was brooding down at the mess in his lap, undoubtedly lost in unhappy thoughts of Wheeler and the aftermath of the night before. _Bitch. _Closed again. Open. Closed. _Bitch._ Playing with it like it was a half-healed scab, watching the freckled vertebrae of Steve’s spine arch from his waistband as he stretched, brushed himself off.

“It’s like,” Steve mumbled, “like I’m an observer to my own life, you know? Like, I’m just looking in, watching all this fucked up shit happen to me, and I can’t do anything about it. Have you ever felt like that? Just … so fucking helpless?”

Billy’s lighter snapped closed. The cherry of his cigarette glowed, red hot, but when he inhaled the smoke seemed balled in his mouth; he couldn’t cough, or breathe. He watched the back of Steve’s neck, a pit of guilt yawning as wide as a gulf inside his chest. As if he were watching something forbidden through a keyhole, or a fissure in the wall; watching in spite of his father, watching in secret. A pit whose waters ran deep, twisting and turning through catacombic darkness. Billy didn’t know how far down it went. Maybe he didn’t want to know. Maybe it went all the way back to the day he was born. A quagmire of shame and rapture, a hand inside his boxers when it was lights out and he was positive his father was asleep two doors down the hallway, boys in the locker room, boys on the court; one boy, only one, was his secret. Just _his._

“Fuck it,” Steve said. He wiped his hands on his jeans, looking back around at Billy. “We should hang out. You and me. Let’s go do something.”

Smoke streamed from Billy’s nostrils, disjointed with each breath. He said, “…What?”

“I mean … why not, right?” Steve’s voice had almost taken on the tone of a whine. Billy thought of Max, six years old and tugging on his sleeve whenever she wanted something from him. She knew better, now; she knew that tugging on his sleeve would earn her an openhanded slap in return. “We—we could see a movie. Shoot some hoops. Whatever you want.”

“Jesus, how much of a faggot are you?”

He spat the word out like it was a shard of bone, a tumor, a landslide. Flicked the cigarette, its end still lit, at Steve’s collar. Watched Steve recoil, as if from a snakebite, every movement telegraphed in nightmarish slow motion.

“Hey! What—”

“I’m not _here_ for you,” Billy snarled in his face. “I’m not your friend.”

Steve looked down at his singed collar, then back up at him. His mouth opened, grasping for speech; his pupils were enormous, filled with hurt. _That’s not supposed to happen. _“Then why,” he said, his voice trembling, “why _are_ you here? Huh?”

He took a lurching step forwards, his hand outstretched. His palm fisted in Billy’s shirt and shoved him, hard. Anger made him surprisingly strong; the shove almost drove Billy to his knees.

“I see the way you look at me,” Steve said. He shoved Billy a second time, his hand sticking to the material of his shirt. “I see _you_, Billy. You prick. You absolute. Fucking. _Prick_. Jeez, you really think I’m that stupid, huh? You—_you _look at _me_! You think I don’t notice? You really think that—that _low _of me? _I’m _the faggot, am I? Yeah, okay, keep telling yourself that—”

Billy hit him.

He didn’t know what made him do it. Maybe it was Steve’s hand, hanging in mid-air. Reaching for him. Steve took everything for granted; it was how he was raised to view the world. Something to be given, whenever he wanted, whenever he asked for it. Billy was supposed to come nicely; maybe that was made him do it.

When Billy’s knuckles made contact with Steve’s jaw, it was with enough force to send his head spinning to one side. His teeth came down on his tongue with a ghastly _click_, clear and sharp through the trees.

_You made me do it_, Billy wanted to scream. Steve’s eyes rolled upwards, gazing at him with something unnamable brimming in them. Billy knew he was parsing the pain, the sudden, unexpected sight of his own blood; his ears would be ringing, his cheek afire and throbbing. God, Billy knew better than anyone. _Don’t look at me like that, you made me do it._

“Bill—_Bill_ …”

Steve was trying to say Billy’s name. His hand seemed frozen in permanent suspension, reaching for the buttons on Billy’s shirt. His teeth and chin were streaked with red.

Billy turned, and ran.

Through the trees, through the snarls of bracken and wild blackberry thorns that drew stinging lashes across his face when he blundered into their midst; all the while he conjured up his hatred, polishing it with the same excuses he used to hear, back in the days of Mom. Back in the days of you fucking bitch-whore-cunt

(_And that boy_, she would say, kissing his nose, _that little boy stayed in Never Never Land, where he wouldn’t ever grow up_—)

Back when Neil’s hatred was fervent and volatile, exploding out of him in a deadly chemical snowfall at the smallest provocation. A spoonful of hatred that he drizzled over his morning coffee like cream and sweetener and witch’s brew. A spoonful of hatred to grease the wheels and make them

(_run_)

(_little piggy_)

Steve’s blood was on his knuckles. Billy stared at it, his hand curled into a claw (unable to close, numb from the hurt that he would feel later, when he started to feel anything at all), dissecting the color with the same removed curiosity as he’d done with Nancy Wheeler’s face, before casting her aside as no threat—for one hideous moment, he thought about smelling it, licking it.

“_Hargrove_?”

Footsteps echoed at his rear, coupled with the sounds of breaking branches and saplings being crushed underfoot. Steve was calling his name, Steve was coming after him; swearing at Billy, telling him to go fuck himself, begging him in the same breath: _let’s talk about it, please. _Billy dragged his hand over the trunk of the nearest tree, leaving a bloody trail on the bark (resisting the urge to scrub and scrub and _scrub _until his whole fucking hand came off, and what would be underneath? What form would he take, then?). From a distance, the blood could almost be sap. Billy shoved his fist into his pocket, and didn’t look back until he reached the sidewalk.

The Harrington’s front gate was visible from where he stood; beyond that, the house. Its walls were as high and vaulting, painted the color of chalk. Billy’s teeth chattered bitterly: it looked like a sarcophagus.

“Get out of here,” a voice said.

He tried affecting his usual drawl, but what came out instead was brittle and reedy. All his bravado had failed him.

He wasn’t wanted here. He didn’t belong. He’d bitten the hand that fed him, like a bad

(_pig_)

dog that needed to be put down, and he’d liked it.

Raindrops spackled Billy’s face, icy and smelling of ozone. The temperature was falling rapidly, the sky growing dark with gathering thunderheads. The places where Steve’s hand had touched his chest felt as though they were giving way, coming unmoored from the rest of his body; he wasn’t as tangible as before.

It was a long walk back to Tina’s. Billy hadn’t brought a jacket, still too accustomed to California weather to remember one. He ran through the sleeting rain, ahead of the wind that was building, rising from the eaves of the houses in a low, throbbing moan. A golden-haired storm of a boy.

**vi.**

Billy was in the library. Someone had written **KILL ALL FAGS! **in black magic marker on his locker. He was standing in the ‘L to N’ section, loading books from the returns cart into their proper places on the shelves. He hadn’t cried, yet. If he did cry, no one would see him. They wouldn’t see him hiding here, taking refuge amongst the shelves like a child sulking over a stubbed toe. Billy had promised himself that.

In retrospect, he knew he should’ve seen it coming. His classmates weren’t as stupid as they looked. Someone had put two and two together—either on the court, or in the showers. That was where he and Steve spent the most time with each other, where ugly blind spots in Billy’s self-control reared like the heads of deathcap mushrooms. He wondered who had snitched—some punk with a grudge, vultures looking for easy status. Too fucking cowardly to say it to his face. It was the nature of the beast; if they had turned on Keg King Harrington once, then they would turn on Billy just as quickly, with equal viciousness.

He wondered if it had been Harrington who’d snitched. Harrington, out for some nuclear revenge. Billy deserved it. The possibility hurt to think about, but he still deserved it. Stones in glasses houses.

He watched Steve through a chink in the shelves, without meaning to. Without even thinking about it.

True to Steve’s word, Billy heard it in the corridors before the first bell: Nancy Wheeler had skipped town with Jonathan Byers, just as the corpse of her old relationship was growing cold. Steve had fielded the questions, the stares, the snickers and the sneers with dazed, bemused indifference; he obviously hadn’t slept, but then again, Billy hadn’t either. He’d spent the night on autopilot, driving the same meandering loop around town. At four o’clock in the morning, he’d found himself back in Loch Nora, gazing at Steve’s front gate. A cask of Jim Beam settling in his belly had given Billy the excuse to flash his headlights on and off, hoping recklessly for an answering flash from one of the windows—thinking he’d seen something move. A twitching of curtains.

Billy had stayed there for another half an hour, until his cigarette had burned down to ash in his mouth. He waited for Steve’s curtains to twitch again, but they never did.

“You should’ve let me drive you back to Tina’s,” Steve said.

He shut the book he was reading, pushing his chair back from the table to stare up at Billy with hollow eyes. Billy couldn’t remember moving away from the shelves, but somehow, he had. He was close enough to see the violent purple bruise marring Steve’s cheek, the split in his lip that was crusted with drying blood. Steve was fucked up. Billy had fucked everything up.

“Yeah, well. Hindsight’s a bitch, ain’t it?”

Steve blinked three or four times. He reopened his book, which Billy saw was titled _Advanced Essay Writing. _It figured; Steve was known for submitting English essays that were completely blank, which was why he attended study group in the library on Wednesdays and Thursdays. There was no study group today, though, not without Wheeler or Byers. In their absence, Steve seemed utterly aimless, like a man who couldn’t remember where he’d left his wallet.

“When you asked me what I wanted,” said Steve, gazing determinedly down at his page, “I wish it had been you. Instead of Nance.”

“You need better standards, Harrington,” Billy said.

Sunlight shafted through the library’s high windows, burnishing the roots of Steve’s hair. Billy had no idea what time it was. He had no idea how long they’d been here. Someone—several someones—could turn a corner at any moment and see them, and that would be all they needed to know about him. Weirdly, Billy was certain they wouldn’t. He—_Steve_—was alone.

(Had he known that before he found Steve here? Didn’t he always make sure Steve was alone, that it was inevitable, unavoidable, before seeking him out?)

“You look at me,” Steve went on; he was squaring his shoulders now, seemingly bracing himself for impact, “and sometimes it’s like—like you wanna kill me. Other times … I dunno. It’s like you’re looking at something that’s familiar, but you don’t know why. Like you’re trying to remember where you’ve seen it before. And you act like it’s such a small thing. Like you don’t even care in the long run … like you don’t care at all. You’re good at that. You tell yourself you are.”

“I don’t _wanna_ be,” Billy blurted out, startling himself. He sat down on the edge of the table, flattening a hand over _Advanced Essay Writing _so that Steve was forced to look him in the eye. “I don’t—I don’t know how—_how _to be …”

_Anything else_, he thought, but the words had jammed in his throat. _I don’t know who I am. _

Steve had reached across the page before he stopped talking. He took Billy’s hand.

“I think it would’ve been different,” he said, “if it had been you.”

His palm was clammy, and his knuckles were too big, inexplicably hairless. Billy licked his lips, preparing to squeeze until he felt all five of Steve’s fingerbones collapse under the pressure. Billy was strong enough to do it. He really would do it—

“Your hands are soft,” Steve whispered.

He moved slow. Too slow for Billy, whose heart had started to pound as soon as Steve touched him, slamming like a door in his chest. Steve kissed his hand. Fuck. Fuck, fuck. Steve kissed the webbing between his fingers, kissed the ring on his pointer finger, then moved his mouth over his thumb. Billy was galvanized—like a rod that had been struck by lightning, all the way down to its core—his arm jerking, fingers catching on the inside of Steve’s mouth—his fingers were inside Steve’s _mouth._ Someone moaned. Billy didn’t know who made the sound—maybe they both had, equally as transfixed by the way Steve was suckling on his fingers with a single-minded ferocity that Billy had never—not in a million years, not even if you’d asked him to bet money on it—imagined he was capable of; he watched his first knuckle disappear into Steve’s mouth, then his second, his heart slamming hard enough to punch holes through the hull of his ribs—stunned by what he was seeing yet not wanting Steve to stop—he didn’t know _what_ he would do if Steve stopped, and that made him afraid—

The sudden sensation of cool air on his fingers, instead of the wet—so very wet—heat of Steve’s mouth, was a distressing jolt of reality. Steve coughed and withdrew, a long line of spittle connecting his chin to Billy’s fingertip. The split in his lip had reopened, and so the spittle was pink where it had mixed with his blood. The sight made Billy delirious. He felt like he was going to faint, or scream, or both.

“_Fuck_,” Steve breathed.

He raised a hand to touch the blood on himself, but the gesture was absentminded, an afterthought; his eyes stayed on Billy’s mouth. Billy understood, then. Things weren’t so slow, then; in fact, they quickened, with exhilarating ease: Billy, spreading his legs and shuffling backwards to make room for Steve’s weight to settle in between them; Steve, tugging on the lapels of his jacket so that they were nose to nose, forehead to forehead.

It was a smearing of mouths and hard, claustrophobic breathing. It was Steve’s hand, somehow finding its way past the lapels of Billy’s jacket, down under his T-shirt to his clavicle, skimming his bare nipple. It was Billy’s back hitting something hard—the table, his back hit the table and the world rotated wildly from one end to the other until he was gasping for air, gasping into Steve’s mouth: “Arnica cream.”

The flaps of Steve’s shirt hung from his belt. He pushed his hair out of his eyes to ogle down at Billy, looking more dazed—and more beautiful—than ever. “Huh?”

Billy rose into a sitting position, curling both ankles around Steve’s calves so that their bodies remained pressed together. “You should try arnica cream,” he said, in a clearer voice. “It’s good for bruises. You can get it from the drugstore—”

“Billy.” Steve cut him off with a finger to his lips, shaking his head. “Let me just—”

He began pulling Billy gently by the lapels, his breath caressing his eyelids. Steve kissed him, close-mouthed and virginal; then, as Billy opened his mouth to speak, the kiss turned into something much messier, infinitely more compelling. Billy realized that his posture was slackening, his spine being coaxed back onto the table by Steve’s touch and Steve’s tongue—his taste, too. And then he would never want to leave.

“We should go,” he urged.

The hairs on his arms were prickling. Steve’s hands had replaced his mouth. They weighed Billy’s chin, stroked his earlobe, mapping the minute shudders of repressed pleasure that forced their way to the surface in reaction. Skin growing raised and bumpy with gooseflesh, as if Steve’s touch was imbibed with a secret electric current. Billy didn’t think Steve was aware of that, either. The sheer magnetism of his presence.

“I wanna stay,” Steve said firmly. “Like this. With you.”

The library was still quiet. Billy watched the sun sink lower through the windows, catching on dust motes in the air and turning them into falling particles of light, like stars in the daytime. Like this: Steve stood too close as always, his arms crossed loosely around Billy’s neck. His own heartbeat was irregular, but warm; Billy could feel it through their clothes. God. He’d almost forgotten what it was like to be warm. Not since California.

He could have pulled away, but he didn’t. Nor did he count down the seconds until Steve let him go.

Steve didn’t let him go. Everything was quiet.

Awake.

Billy was awake.


End file.
